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Subject: ADFF NEWSLETTER 03_07_2012

Dear Friend,

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray (below in Cuba)
are the co-directors of the opening night film
Unfinished Spaces ( April 12 @ 8:00 and April 15
@7:00 ).

Alysa and
Benjamin participated in the ADFF New York Film
Festival and will be having their Chicago
premiere at the Architecture and Design Film
Festival. "We're really excited to be part of the
ADFF film fest,” says Alysa. “Our
screenings at ADFF-NY were sold out, the
discussions were incredible and it was wonderful
to hear how the audience reacted to this film.
It's fantastic to be a part of it, and its an
honor to have Unfinished Spaces be this years
opening night film ”

UNFINISHED
SPACES: The Chicago 2012
Festival Opening Night Film

Written By Kristen Kellogg

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray never dreamt
that their meeting at an Art Theory class in
college would prove so fortuitous and that they
would go on to produce a film together – a film
that received a standing ovation when it
premiered in Los Angeles to a sold-out screening
at the Regal Theatre!

During a trip to Cuba studying architecture in
2001, Alysa heard about Castro’s dream of
creating the world’s most beautiful arts
schools – Cuba’s National Arts Schools -
and the subsequent fate of those schools.
She was introduced to Roberto Gottardi. “Roberto
took me on a tour of the campus and told me the
stories and showed me old photographs. I
was really taken, not only by the architecture,
but also by the story and by his personality. I
asked him on the spot 'Why hasn’t someone made a
film about this?', because it’s so cinematic in
terms of the visuals and the narrative and he
said 'Well why don’t you do it?'"

She returned to New York and told Benjamin about
her experience and the concept of creating a
film. "It was just an idea. A feel. And he
totally got it," says Alysa. "So we started
working from that moment." And after ten years of
total immersion in architecture and Cuban
cultural and political history; ten years of
filming on long hot summer days in Havana, the
story of Unfinished Spaces came into
being.

Alysa and Benjamin's first feature
film, Unfinished Spaces, is an
exciting tale that intertwines history and
humanity, but most of all, it’s the fascinating
story of the journey that three architects,
Roberto Gottardi, Ricardo Porro, Vitorro
Garratti, took together to create these visual
masterpieces throughout a Cuban
Revolution.

Alysa, an architect/filmmaker, and Benjamin, a
filmmaker, used their complimentary skill sets to
produce a truly captivating film. With a
spirit of adventure, the two set out with open
minds and a shared vision. "Instead of going
through the standard channels for film production
in Cuba, for instance, we really just went down
and filmed and asked questions later, and I think
that spirit was recognized by people in power and
so they actually opened up in ways that I think
were unusual in gaining access to the sites and
gaining access to the archival footage," says
Benjamin. The two actually, by chance at a party
in Cuba, befriended Fidel Casto's personal
filmmaker of the last 25 years resulting in
access to historical footage. “Just through that
friendship, we were able to get access. He
had his assistants go through archives and pull
any footage that he had of Castro talking about
the schools,” says Benjamin. “He also generously
gave us outtakes from some of his other
films-some color imagery of the early days of the
revolution.” Many people helped us and
their only return was the gratification of
having contributed to the documentation of a
piece of history.

An original goal of theirs to show the film in
Cuba at the Havana Film Festival was achieved in
December. "The reaction of the audiences in
Havana was emotional and physical. People
understood how the schools are a metaphor for the
revolution, but many of the audience members also
took it as a metaphor for their lives," Benjamin
says of their December Havana premier.
Alysa and Benjamin have not only produced an
eye-opening film, but one that is becoming a very
relevant cultural artifact for Cuba. Since
their Havana premiere, the film has sparked
recent discussions of future funding to the
restore and complete the Art
Schools.